After a third place finish highlighted by a one-two finish from juniors Kevin Cronin and Nick Miehe to open the season, the Rutgers men’s cross country team heads back to Van Courtlandt Park in the Bronx for the Iona College Meet of Champions.
But this time the Scarlet Knights have some different goals in mind.
With the first race being a tune-up for the season, the second race serves as an indicator of where the team stands.
“I’m kind of looking at it as a measuring stick kind of race to see where all the summer training has brought me and I know the other guys are, too,” Miehe said. “I think it should really tell us how good our team really is because we’ll be at full force this weekend with all our guys.”
And that includes the Knights’ newest member, Taylor Burmeister.
Burmeister is a fifth-year graduate student who spent his first four years of eligibility at Haverford College. He sat out of the team’s first race this season because of paper work that needed to be finished.
The transfer provides added depth to an already veteran team that includes the one-two punch of Cronin and Miehe.
“He’ll probably end up being our third runner, so he’ll bring the gap between the number one and number five guys [closer],” head coach Mike Mulqueen said.
More importantly is the fact that RU returns to this five-mile course two more times this season, once for the IC4A Championships at the end of November.
“It was good for the guys to see how the whole course was set up,” Mulqueen said following the meet Saturday.
Cronin added that the knowledge and comfort level of a course is crucial to success.
“It was very important,” Cronin said. “We are going to be racing it two more times so it’s very important. I guess you could say it’s almost like a scrimmage.”
As the Iona College Meet of Champions boasts a much deeper field that includes the likes of Wisconsin and Iowa, the race has a quicker pace and gives the team a gauge on how well they can do this season.
“We’re going to try and run well as a pack and try and get that time differential down between our first seven or eight guys,” Mulqueen said. “We want to get that time differential down less than what it was this week where we are in terms of our gap between our first and second and six and seven.”
More importantly is the finish of the top five, as they are the point scorers.
“A good goal would be to bring our five man time a lot closer. I’d love to see it within a minute of each other,” Miehe said. “I just want to bring that gap closer together and that would help us a lot and we’ll finish pretty well this weekend.”
RU heads back to the Bronx hoping for repeat performance
Published: Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Updated: Friday, September 18, 2009
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